Egypt’s boundless and incomparable riches
Tourist sites are packed with objects 1,500-2,000 years older than anything on display anywhere else
In February 1991 — towards the end of the Gulf War — I found myself sitting next to the then CEO of SAA, Gert van der Veer, on a flight from London to Johannesburg. He told me he had just been in Egypt to engage with his counterpart there with a view to opening the route between Johannesburg and Cairo. During the course of our conversation, he mentioned that the war had kept tourists out of Egypt. He said he had been one of only two visitors to the Valley of the Kings.
The image was extraordinarily evocative. The idea of the world’s greatest collection of antiquities unencumbered by thousands of tourists and therefore available to be enjoyed in tranquillity visited me many times over the ensuing three decades — usually when being carried forward on a tsunami of visitors at the Sistine Chapel or the Acropolis...
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